Mangled dongle dangle trouble

My ethernet connection has coped fairly well since the accident but it does rely on the cable dangling at a particular angle so that the plug makes a good connection with the PC card (too shallow and it doesn't connect properly; too steep and it causes undue stress and makes it more difficult to connect in future). This has in large part been due to the fact that the laptop has been sitting on a tray, the edge of which is just the right height.

Well, the laptop got moved last night (this is to do with my parents being here till the weekend) so this morning I had to twiddle it again. I'd got it working when I shut the lid (leaving the laptop still running), but wouldn't I just have to have one more fiddle to make sure the plug stayed in properly. Next thing I knew, the laptop was booting up (off the DOS floppy I'd previously made and failed to remove from the drive), having suddenly reset itself. I was not impressed. Oh well, the disks probably all needed fscking anyway since it's been so long since the last time, but it doesn't half take a long time (on a P150 with 3200MB of mounted disk).